Burying the Image of "the Wounded Negro"

Puncturing the stereotype of “the
wounded Negro” was the focus of the noted educator and African American
historian Charles M. Payne in delivering the inaugural Edmund Gordon Lecture,
delivered at TC in early October.

“There’s a reduction going on,”
Payne said. Even among well-intended activists for progress, “black
people are reduced to their oppression.”

Payne – the Frank P. Hixon
Distinguished Service Professor in the University of Chicago’s School of Social
Service Administration and former Chief Education Officer for Chicago Public
Schools – traced the evolution of the “wounded-Negro” trope across past social
movements. The abolitionists employed it by mobilizing slaves to tell “horrible
personal stories,” Payne said, while the “friends of the Negro would handle the
analysis part.” The Depression-era Communists similarly portrayed black people
as oppressed workers rather than as protagonists “developed enough” to be
capable of Marxism’s “scientific analysis of society.”

Payne’s lecture was accompanied by a
tribute to Edmund Gordon, TC’s 93-year-old Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus
of Psychology and Education, who attended the event along with his wife and
partner on much of his work, the physician Susan Gordon. Both the lecture and
the event were part of TC’s Educating Harlem Project, a collaboration between
the College’s Program in History and Education and the Institute for Urban and
Minority Education (IUME), which Gordon founded in 1973, with support from TC’s
Center on History and Education.

“I don’t think a day goes by when I
don’t cite or quote Ed Gordon,” TC President Susan Fuhrman said in her opening
remarks. “Our concerns about equity, assessment, diversity – everything we
think about at TC, which is so focused on its mission of social justice – has
been shaped by his thinking,.”

Black thinkers like Frederick
Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Ralph Ellison exposed and rejected the “wounded
Negro” as belittling of individuality and experience, Payne said, but the image
endured, in part as a useful device for “friends of the Negro not above trading
on Negro suffering.” The stereotype also played to the activists’ narratives of
themselves as heroes or saviors. Payne pointed out that some black leaders spun
their own versions of the theory as well.

Payne suggested that the “wounded
Negro” thesis lives on in the argument advanced by many current education
reformers that “schools can’t do it alone.” In the 1970s, he said, the claim
that African-American children were handicapped by cultural factors and the
purported breakdown of the black family was “right out there in front.” Today,
he said, it still lurks in arguments that poverty and other out-of-school
factors “overwhelm the capacity of schools” to deliver positive outcomes.

In the process, Payne said a
conservative argument has become one held by progressives. “Isn’t it bizarre
when conservatives are saying ‘Kids are fine,’ while progressives are saying,
‘Fix poverty before we fix schools?’ The world is standing on its head!”

Payne took care to emphasize he was
not arguing against poverty reduction or other out-of-school programs. “We all
agree that poverty should be addressed,” he said. “But that has nothing to do
with what schools can or cannot do.”

The variation in “performance
metrics that actually matter” suggests there is plenty of scope for positive
change at the level of school systems, Payne said. He cited the wide variations
in gains in math and reading proficiency scores on the National Assement of
Education Progress (NAEP) from near-stagnation in some places to successes in
others, like Montgomery County, Md., and Boston, where “change is very real.”

Of course, out-of-school factors
could play a part in the success stories as well, Payne said. But what is
lacking is the data and rigorous analysis to sort out what progress comes from
the “thinking and action of school leaders” versus other factors. At present,
he said, too much school-level thinking is tangled in sterile debates over
closing schools and firing teachers.

A more productive way forward, he
argued, would involve shedding the residue of the “wounded-Negro” theory that
manifests itself in the “reductionist discourse of every kid in the ghetto.” In
fact, he said, needs are individual and many children are very close to being
able to succeed. “Some kids need the Marine Corps, but some need just one more
positive adult for 15 minutes a week,” Payne said.

Present debates, Payne argued,
“don’t take into account that the majority of poor children and parents don’t
experience schools as welcoming places. We need to figure out what happens when
schools systematically make the effort to help kids feel they belong. Once we
do that at some level of scale, only then can we know what schools can and cannot
do.”

Deferring school-level investment of
resources and study, Payne said, means falling back on reductionist,
discredited notions of race and capability -- and it’s disrespectful to
educators: “Emphasizing what schools can’t do before we look at what they can
do insults generations of people who insisted on making a way out of no way.”

The power of
Payne’s remarks were underscored by the tribute to Gordon, who in many ways has
devoted his career to debunking damaging stereotypes of African Americans.

“You can talk
about the all the fields in which he is an expert, or the methodological
dexterity, or the number of people whom he has mentored and been a legend to,
but perhaps his key contribution is that Professor Gordon is as responsible as
anyone for seriously reframing the way we have thought about the young peop;le
we teach, the families they come from and the neighborhoods they live in, not
as deficits, but as possibilities,” said Morrell. “You change your perceptions
and all kinds of things become possible – and that is the gift he has given us
over 65 years as an intellectual, an advocate, a mentor, a professor, a
scholar, a director and an administrator.”

Gordon himself closed the evening by thanking
Teachers College and “so many of you who have made the journey for me so
rewarding. Perhaps the best reward for my efforts, and for my wife’s
companionship in trying to make our contributions, is the people like our speaker
tonight and my successor as director of IUME, and about 75 to a hundred young
scholars like them. It’s worth living to 93 to be able to see them.”

Burying the Image of "the Wounded Negro"

Puncturing the stereotype of “the
wounded Negro” was the focus of the noted educator and African American
historian Charles M. Payne in delivering the inaugural Edmund Gordon Lecture,
delivered at TC in early October.

“There’s a reduction going on,”
Payne said. Even among well-intended activists for progress, “black
people are reduced to their oppression.”

Payne – the Frank P. Hixon
Distinguished Service Professor in the University of Chicago’s School of Social
Service Administration and former Chief Education Officer for Chicago Public
Schools – traced the evolution of the “wounded-Negro” trope across past social
movements. The abolitionists employed it by mobilizing slaves to tell “horrible
personal stories,” Payne said, while the “friends of the Negro would handle the
analysis part.” The Depression-era Communists similarly portrayed black people
as oppressed workers rather than as protagonists “developed enough” to be
capable of Marxism’s “scientific analysis of society.”

Payne’s lecture was accompanied by a
tribute to Edmund Gordon, TC’s 93-year-old Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus
of Psychology and Education, who attended the event along with his wife and
partner on much of his work, the physician Susan Gordon. Both the lecture and
the event were part of TC’s Educating Harlem Project, a collaboration between
the College’s Program in History and Education and the Institute for Urban and
Minority Education (IUME), which Gordon founded in 1973, with support from TC’s
Center on History and Education.

“I don’t think a day goes by when I
don’t cite or quote Ed Gordon,” TC President Susan Fuhrman said in her opening
remarks. “Our concerns about equity, assessment, diversity – everything we
think about at TC, which is so focused on its mission of social justice – has
been shaped by his thinking,.”

Black thinkers like Frederick
Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Ralph Ellison exposed and rejected the “wounded
Negro” as belittling of individuality and experience, Payne said, but the image
endured, in part as a useful device for “friends of the Negro not above trading
on Negro suffering.” The stereotype also played to the activists’ narratives of
themselves as heroes or saviors. Payne pointed out that some black leaders spun
their own versions of the theory as well.

Payne suggested that the “wounded
Negro” thesis lives on in the argument advanced by many current education
reformers that “schools can’t do it alone.” In the 1970s, he said, the claim
that African-American children were handicapped by cultural factors and the
purported breakdown of the black family was “right out there in front.” Today,
he said, it still lurks in arguments that poverty and other out-of-school
factors “overwhelm the capacity of schools” to deliver positive outcomes.

In the process, Payne said a
conservative argument has become one held by progressives. “Isn’t it bizarre
when conservatives are saying ‘Kids are fine,’ while progressives are saying,
‘Fix poverty before we fix schools?’ The world is standing on its head!”

Payne took care to emphasize he was
not arguing against poverty reduction or other out-of-school programs. “We all
agree that poverty should be addressed,” he said. “But that has nothing to do
with what schools can or cannot do.”

The variation in “performance
metrics that actually matter” suggests there is plenty of scope for positive
change at the level of school systems, Payne said. He cited the wide variations
in gains in math and reading proficiency scores on the National Assement of
Education Progress (NAEP) from near-stagnation in some places to successes in
others, like Montgomery County, Md., and Boston, where “change is very real.”

Of course, out-of-school factors
could play a part in the success stories as well, Payne said. But what is
lacking is the data and rigorous analysis to sort out what progress comes from
the “thinking and action of school leaders” versus other factors. At present,
he said, too much school-level thinking is tangled in sterile debates over
closing schools and firing teachers.

A more productive way forward, he
argued, would involve shedding the residue of the “wounded-Negro” theory that
manifests itself in the “reductionist discourse of every kid in the ghetto.” In
fact, he said, needs are individual and many children are very close to being
able to succeed. “Some kids need the Marine Corps, but some need just one more
positive adult for 15 minutes a week,” Payne said.

Present debates, Payne argued,
“don’t take into account that the majority of poor children and parents don’t
experience schools as welcoming places. We need to figure out what happens when
schools systematically make the effort to help kids feel they belong. Once we
do that at some level of scale, only then can we know what schools can and cannot
do.”

Deferring school-level investment of
resources and study, Payne said, means falling back on reductionist,
discredited notions of race and capability -- and it’s disrespectful to
educators: “Emphasizing what schools can’t do before we look at what they can
do insults generations of people who insisted on making a way out of no way.”

The power of
Payne’s remarks were underscored by the tribute to Gordon, who in many ways has
devoted his career to debunking damaging stereotypes of African Americans.

“You can talk
about the all the fields in which he is an expert, or the methodological
dexterity, or the number of people whom he has mentored and been a legend to,
but perhaps his key contribution is that Professor Gordon is as responsible as
anyone for seriously reframing the way we have thought about the young peop;le
we teach, the families they come from and the neighborhoods they live in, not
as deficits, but as possibilities,” said Morrell. “You change your perceptions
and all kinds of things become possible – and that is the gift he has given us
over 65 years as an intellectual, an advocate, a mentor, a professor, a
scholar, a director and an administrator.”

Gordon himself closed the evening by thanking
Teachers College and “so many of you who have made the journey for me so
rewarding. Perhaps the best reward for my efforts, and for my wife’s
companionship in trying to make our contributions, is the people like our speaker
tonight and my successor as director of IUME, and about 75 to a hundred young
scholars like them. It’s worth living to 93 to be able to see them.”